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Alternative Publishing

M. Vaughn-James (1974)

M. Vaughn-James’ The Projector (1971) might be the most substantial book-length visual fiction ever published in North America—“visual,” because most of the information within the narrative is visual, rather than verbal. The Projector contains, to be precise, over one hundred pages of rectangular line-drawings, some of which contain words, all of which evoke, according to their author, “a multitude of inexplicable repetitions, fascinating and confusing juxtapositions, and fragments of imagery.” Not only do these images stick in the reader’s head but the book as a whole creates its own coherent timeless placeless world. This is truly “surrealist” fiction—far more effective than anything those literary Parisians ever imagined for themselves. Vaughn-James, an Englishman most recently residing in Paris, was fortunate in having the Canadian publisher Coach House (rather, than, say, Random House) as his publisher, because those Torontonians know how to produce a beautiful book whose designs suit the needs of the manuscript (rather than the reverse).